Freedom-to-operate Analysis

Hi,
A FTO ("freedom to operate") analysis is to check the marketability rights of your product in any specific jurisdiction with respect to Intellectual Property Rights present in that jurisdiction. From Marketability rights, i mean whether you new launched product is infringing the rights of any 3rd party patent or not. Ahead, for SMEs, its a very important step with respect to successfully launching the product in any jurisdiction, to avoid any future patent litigation of related product, to avoid punitive damage in case of negative outcomes of any future patent litigation, to make the investor confidence in SME's product line and all. The importance of FTO in your product line cloud-computing service is also doubly important as the domain is full of patent litigation cases.
Further, yes FTO can be executed for Patent application before launching product. This will help you to analyse the risk before as the respective market is very fast and no firm will wait the granting of patent which will take an average of 3.5-4 years.
My firm is executing FTO study for global clients and it will cost you around 1400-1600 euro for the search and analysis.
Let me know if I can be of any additional help.

Best,
ashutosh